May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese proverb. Few can doubt that we are indeed living in such an interesting time. Big changes are afoot in the world, it seems.

None more so than the collapsing of the American Empire.

The US is going through an historic “correction” in the same way that the Soviet Union did some 30 years ago when the latter was confronted with the reality of its unsustainable political and economic system. (That’s not meant to imply, however, that socialism is unviable, because arguably the Soviet Union had fatally strayed from its genuine socialist project into something more akin to unwieldy state capitalism.)

In any case, all empires come to an end eventually. History is littered with the debris of countless empires. Why should the American Empire be any different? It’s not. Only arrogant “American exceptionalism” deludes itself from the reality.

The notable thing is just how in denial the political class and the US news media are about the unfolding American crisis.

This is partly where the whole “Russiagate” narrative comes into play. Blaming Russia for allegedly destabilizing US politics and society is a cover for denial over the internal rot facing the US.

Some may scoff at the very idea of an “American Empire”. That’s something Europeans did, not us, goes the apologist for US power. The quick retort to that view is to point out that the US has over 1,000 military bases in more than 100 countries around the world. If that is not a manifestation of empire then what is?For seven decades since the Second World War, “Pax Americana” was the grandiose name given to US imperial design for the global order. The period was far from peaceful as the vainglorious name suggests. Dozens of wars, proxy conflicts and violent subversions were carried by the US on every continent in order to maintain its empire. The so-called “global policeman” was more often a “global thug”.

That US empire is now teetering at the cusp of an emerging multipolar world order led by China, Russia and other rising powers.

When US leaders complain about China and Russia “reshaping the global order” to reflect their interests what the American leaders are tacitly admitting is the coming end of Washington’s presumed hegemony.

Rather than accepting the fate of demise, the US is aggressively resisting by denigrating China and Russia’s power as somehow illegitimate. It’s the classic denial reaction of a sore loser.

So, what are the telltale signs that the US is indeed undergoing a seminal “correction” — or collapse?

The heyday of American capitalism is well passed. The once awesome productive system is a skeleton of its former self. The rise of massive social poverty alongside obscene wealth among a tiny elite is a sure sign that the once mighty American economy is chronically moribund. The country’s soaring $20 trillion national debt is another symptom of chronic atrophy.

Recent self-congratulatory whooping by President Trump of “economic recovery” is like the joy felt from looking at a mirage. The roaring stock market is an elite phenomenon which can just as easily slump over night.What the champagne bubbles can’t disguise is the structural failing of US capitalism to reverse exploding inequality and endemic poverty across America. The national prowess of US capitalism has been superseded by global capitalism where American corporations among others scour the planet for cheap labor and tax havens. There is no going back to a supposed golden age, no matter how much Trump crows about “America First”.

The other side of the coin from historic US economic demise is the concomitant rise in its militarism as a way to compensate for its overall loss of power.

It is no coincidence that since the end of the Cold War following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, US military interventions around the world have erupted with increased frequency and duration. The US is in a veritable permanent state of war actively deploying its forces simultaneously in several countries, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East.

Washington of course gives itself a fig leaf cover by calling its surge in militarism a “war on terror” or “defending allies”. But, increasingly, US war conduct is seen for what it plainly is — violation of international law and the sovereignty of nations for the pursuit of American imperial interests.

In short, the US is patently lashing out as a rogue regime. There’s no disguising that fiendish fact.

In addition to waging wars, bombing countries, sponsoring terrorist proxies and assassinating enemies at will with drones, Washington is increasingly threatening others with military aggression. In recent months, North Korea and Iran have been openly threatened based on spurious claims. Russia and China have also been explicitly warned of American aggression in several strategic documents published by the Trump administration.

The grounds for American belligerence are baseless. As noted, the real motive is to do with compensating for its own inherent political, economic and social crises. That then amounts to American leaders inciting conflicts and wars, which is in itself a grave violation of international law — a crime against peace, according to Nuremberg principles.

The American Empire is failing and flailing. This is the spectacle of our time. The Western mainstream news media are either blind, ignorant or complicit in denying the historic collapse. Such media are indulging reckless fantasies of the US political class to distract from the potential internal implosion. Casting around for scapegoats to “explain” the deep inherent problems, the political class are using Russia and alleged Russian “interference” as a pretext.

World history has reached a foreboding cross-roads due to the collapsing of the American Empire. Can we navigate a safe path forward avoiding catastrophic war that often accompanies the demise of empires?

A lot, it seems, depends on ordinary American people becoming politically organized to challenge their dysfunctional system run by and for the elites. If the American people cannot hold their elites to account and break their corrupt rule, overhauling it with something more equitable and democratic, then the world is in peril of being plunged into total war. We can only but wish our American brothers and sisters solidarity and success.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

When he last spoke with Reason in 1973, Daniel Ellsberg was on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers. The Harvard-educated military analyst at the RAND Corporation had long wrestled with many of the moral quandaries of war, but was a consummate Washington insider up until the moment he decided to release a classified Department of Defense study of the Vietnam War, with its damning proof that President Lyndon Johnson had misled Congress and the public about the conflict.

While it looked like Ellsberg might spend the rest of his life behind bars, he was saved—ironically—by Richard Nixon’s paranoid dealings, which included sending goons to break into Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist’s office and allegedly plotting to have him killed.

If the original leaking plan had gone Ellsberg’s way, he suspects he might be in prison still. As he relates in his new book, Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (Bloomsbury), along with the now-familiar thousands of pages on Vietnam, he had unprecedented civilian access to nuclear planning documents in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. He swiped and copied them as well. Unfortunately, Ellsberg gave the nuclear documents to his brother, who buried them for safekeeping until the Pentagon Papers trial was over. A hurricane collapsed the hill where they were hidden, and they were lost to history. Ellsberg has had 45 years to wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t been, and more than 60 years to be unnerved by the recklessness, poor planning, and misinformation rampant in an area of policy with the highest possible stakes.

Today, Ellsberg is the 86-year-old elder statesmen of whistleblowing. He calls Edward Snowden “a hero of mine.” In return, Snowden has said he was following in Ellsberg’s footsteps when he leaked his own cache of secret government documents in 2013.

Reason spoke with Ellsberg by phone in October about his new book, his belief that nobody needs more nuclear weapons than Kim Jong Un has, and why the Cold War’s apocalyptic threats still hang over us.

Reason: Do you still get people calling you a traitor, and do you anticipate getting more of that on Twitter, now that you have a presence there?

Daniel Ellsberg: For decades I used to say that being called “traitor” is something you never get used to. But the truth is, for humans, you get used to anything. After 40 years, it doesn’t get a big rise out of me anymore.

It did very much at first. As a person whose identification was patriotism in a very conventional way—after all, I did go into the Marines, and I volunteered to go to Vietnam—the idea of being called traitor was very, very painful. But even at the beginning, I felt that people who would use that term didn’t understand our country very well, or our Constitution.

In many other countries, you work for a führer, to use the German word: a leader. And the leader is the government. You can’t criticize the administration without being regarded as treasonous. That’s one of the reasons that a revolution was fought over here, a war of independence.

Bettmann/Getty

In my case, the loyalty was to the Constitution and to the country rather than to the administration. Every officer in all the armed services and every member of the Congress and every official in the executive branch all take the same oath. The president’s is a little bit different, but everybody else has the same one, and it’s not to a leader, and it’s not to secrecy. It’s to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I had been violating that oath, I would say, when I knew that a president was violating the Constitution and waging war under false pretenses. In the end, I felt that the right thing to do, definitely, was to tell the Congress and the public what was being done in their name. That certainly seemed to me like being a better patriot than I had been.

When you last spoke to Reason more than 40 years ago, you said you were a former Cold War Democrat who was “in transition” and “very influenced by the people who are radical pacifists and anarchists.” I’m curious about how you would describe your politics since then.

I was influenced really by nonviolent activists in the Gandhian tradition and the Martin Luther King tradition. Giving the Pentagon Papers was a radical action. It involved truth telling and risk to myself. I expected to go to prison for life.

I still want to live up to that tradition. But I never became a total pacifist. I don’t agree with those of my friends who are critical of all wars. The truth is, though, that there hasn’t been one since the Second World War that I could really recognize on our part as having been justified or worthwhile. So I remain very much anti-imperial and very skeptical of intervention.

I found it interesting that you use World War II as an example of a justified war. In your recent book, there’s some mention of your dislike of the tactics the Allies used.

Well, look, to say that I thought the war was just and even necessary against Hitler does not mean that I would endorse our tactics. I thought that the firebombing of Germany toward the later stages, and the entire bombing of Japan, which consisted of trying to kill as many Japanese civilians as possible, was a clear-cut war crime from beginning to end. Indeed, if you’re really to take the idea of war crimes seriously, no question, it should have been prosecuted.

I don’t think you can understand the nuclear age and how it came to be if you don’t know the history of World War II. Most people don’t know—they bought the government line that our effort was only to hit military targets in a narrow sense, and that other people were being hit only by accident, in what we now call collateral damage. That was a flat-out lie from ’42 on. They were imitating the Nazi tactics in the blitz. That departed entirely from the notion of “just practice” in war, as opposed to “just cause.” Unfortunately, that precedent worked itself out in the worst possible way. The legitimation [of using nuclear weapons] really came before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which in turn simply reflected what our Air Force had been doing for the previous year.

By the way, are you asking these questions from the point of view of a total pacifist?

I’m OK with self-defense, but I think it’s hard to find a justified war even if you think some conflicts within that war were justified.

The occasional somewhat violent uprising is successful, but it’s very few. That’s why I’m much more committed to the idea of nonviolent resistance efforts of various kinds. But in the case of [justified tactics during] World War II, I would point to the British actions in the Battle of Britain. The dogfights in the air, but also anti-aircraft [attacks] against bombers. I not only see that as justified—or as some pacifists will say, “I don’t condemn that”—I think they were doing the right thing. They did prevent the invasion of Britain. And I don’t think that nonviolent tactics against those bomber planes would have been as effective at all.

I agree. But there are people who slide from that into “and therefore every Allied tactic was justified because they had to win, and they did win, and therefore they had to do all that in order to win.”

Yeah. But that’s based just on an assumption. It doesn’t bear up to real historical analysis of what exactly happened and whether it was necessary or not. Sure, people will say that at the time they thought the bombing of cities was not only effective but necessary. But that turned out to be untrue. There remains no justification, and that was fairly clear as the war was going on. It had to be kept from the public in both Britain and America because the leaders knew that it did not stand up morally.

“In the end, I felt that the right thing to do, definitely, was to tell the Congress and the public what was being done in their name.”

The Russians were fighting under Stalin for a terrible regime, and many of them knew it—but they were fighting against Nazi invaders. A pacifist friend of mine recently said, “Look, they lost 20 million people. What could be worse than that?” A fair question, except that if one was to look into the German plans you’d see that what they had in mind was depopulating Russia to the point of killing by starvation 30–40 million people.

So even under the terrible conditions of the Russian front, they were fighting for their lives, and I think justifiably.

Let’s talk about your new book. Could you sum up the bizarre circumstances by which you lost the other papers?

I decided in 1969 when I started copying the Pentagon Papers that, since I’m doing this, I should really put out information far more significant than the information on Vietnam, and that was the dangers for human existence that we have been building up and which the Russians have been imitating now for some years.

I copied everything in my top-secret safe, much of which dealt with nuclear matters. Not operational details, but the fact that we were contemplating first use and first strike—disarming attacks on the Soviet Union—and this resulted in a very dangerous situation, especially because the Russians were doing the same.

I was influenced by the example of draft resisters like Randy Kehler, who were on their way to prison for nonviolent resistance to the draft. I concluded that if that was the right thing for these young men to do, I could and should do that also, by telling the truth. I saw Randy Kehler just before he was due to go to prison in San Francisco, and I told him what I was doing at that very moment in the way of copying. He thought it wasn’t important to put out the Pentagon Papers, because enough about Vietnam had come out already. What was really new and important was the nuclear material. I said, “Well, I agree with him on the importance, but Vietnam is where the bombs are falling right now, and I want to do what I can to shorten that war by informing people what was being done in their name.” My plan really was to go through my trial—maybe a couple of trials, for distribution as well as copying—and then put out the nuclear papers.

That didn’t happen because I gave them to my brother who, to shorten the story, hid them in a town dump, and a hurricane actually came through and disturbed the trash field that he’d buried them in, including moving the stove that he’d used to mark the location. It’s just impossible to find the box containing the nuclear papers anymore.

Radical Islamic Terrorists are everywhere, it seems. They’re all over Syria and Iraq. They’re in Libya and Nigeria too. They attacked the former Soviet Union from Afghanistan and modern day Russia from Chechnya. We’ve seen them in the Philippines. They attacked an Australian cafe in Sydney, so we were told. Recently they’ve been in Myanmar (Burma). They’ve infiltrated Europe and are behind various attacks in London, Paris, Berlin and Barcelona, so we were told. They’re even in China (Uyghur/Xinjiang). And of course, they paid a grand visit to the US on 9/11 in 2001, right? Radical Islamic terrorists have scary beards, chant strange incantations and strike on every populated continent, so aren’t they the real bad guys in the world? Well … you may think that, but there is far more than meets the eye here.

ISIS in the Philippines, radical Islamic terrorists in Myanmar … just a coincidence?

Radical Islamic Terrorists – Cause or Symptom of the World’s Evils?

While I understand people’s desire for border control and limited immigration policies, some who gravitate towards the right of the political spectrum are quick to demonize all immigrants, find fault with Islam as a religion and blame all Muslims for the world’s evils. They point to radical Islamic terrorists as proof that anything Islamic has to be feared and hated. Aside from the obvious problems with this position – gross generalization, guilt by association, assigning collective guilt to individuals, judging that which you don’t know or understand, etc. – it’s only looking at the situation from a very superficial perspective. The game is being played at much, much deeper levels. We need to expand perception if we’re going to see it.

The real issue is this: are radical Islamic terrorists the cause of all the world’s ills – or are they just the symptom? What’s behind radical Islamic terrorism? Who created it? Who keeps creating it? Who trains these radical Islamic terrorists? Who funds them? Who arms them? Who controls them? Answers to these questions will help shed light on the whole situation.

Saudi Arabia: First Layer Source of Radical Islamic Terrorists

You don’t have to dig very deep to discover that Saudi Arabia is the veritable marble fountainhead of radical Islamic terrorism. Saudi Arabia is such a wellspring and source of radical Islamic terrorism that the terms Saudi Arabia and radical Islamic terrorism may as well be synonymous. Events really descended into the pit of absurdity when Saudi Arabia a few months ago had the gall to accuse Qatar of funding terrorism, claiming that was their reason for cutting ties with Qatar! No less absurd are Donald Trump’s claims that he is fighting radical Islamic terrorists while sucking up to and cutting deals with the Saudis. Last time I checked, funding something and selling it your weapons is not a very effective way of fighting it. Iran, one of the few Middle Eastern nations that is genuinely committed to fighting terrorism, is constantly accused of being the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, but it’s all a game of distraction, smoke and mirrors. The US levels accusations like that at Iran only because the US is being led along by Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of whom hate Iran with a vengeance.

Get ’em while they’re young: young boys being trained to become the next generation of radical Islamic terrorists. Image credit: WorldAffairs.blog.

Saudi Arabia has entire networks of madrasses or schools that train jihadi terrorists and teach a militant form of Islam known as Wahhabism which espouses violence. Other terms used to describe radical Islamic terrorists are Salafists (fundamentalist and strict Muslims who claims to follow the exact teachings of Mohammad and support Sharia law) and Takfiris (literally an apostate or an unbeliever [i.e. worthy of being killed]). The depth and breadth of Saudi funding of radical Islamic terrorists is truly staggering, as this article explains:

“How does Saudi Arabia go about spreading extremism? The extremist agenda is not always clearly government-sanctioned, but in monarchies where the government money is spread around to various princes, there is little accountability for what the royal family does with their government funds. Much of the funding is via charitable organizations and is not military-related.

The money goes to constructing and operating mosques and madrassas that preach radical Wahhabism. The money also goes to training imams; media outreach and publishing; distribution of Wahhabi textbooks, and endowments to universities and cultural centers … Although the Wahhabi curriculum was modified after the 9/11 attacks, it remains backward and intolerant. Freedom House published a report on the revised curriculum, concluding that it “continues to propagate an ideology of hate toward the ‘unbeliever,’ which include Christians, Jews, Shiites, Sufis, Sunni Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine, Hindus, atheists and others.” This is taught not only domestically but also enthusiastically exported abroad.”

“For instance, a Wikileaks cable clearly quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” She continues: “More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups.” … Other cables released by Wikileaks outline how Saudi front companies are also used to fund terrorism abroad.”

“… out of the 61 groups that are designated asterrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department, the overwhelming majority are Wahhabi-inspired and Saudi-funded groups, with a focus on the West and Iran as their primary enemy. Only two are Shi’a—Hezbollah and Kataib Hezbollah, and only four have ever claimed to receive support from Iran. Nearly all of the Sunni militant groups listed receive significant support from either the Saudi government or Saudi citizens.”

It is important to understand that mainstream Sunni Islam rejects all types of militant Islam, as can be seen in the declarations and discussions of leading Islamic imams and scholars at this international Islamic Conference in 2016.

So there is a mountain of evidence that Saudi Arabia funds radical Islamic terrorists and exports its brand of militant Islam to Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other parts of the world. However, the story is much deeper than this, so let’s peel back another layer of the onion.

Radical Islamic terrorists or radical CIAslamic terrorists?

The CIA and Mossad: Deeper Layer Source of Radical Islamic Terrorists

The psychopathic mindset of the NWO controllers views people and groups outside of itself as things to be used, dumped and/or expended as necessary. Islamic terrorism is one of its favorite tools. Let’s face it: from the Anglo-American-Zionist New World Order point of view, radical Islamic terrorists are cheap, expendable, easy to arm and easy to fool (e.g. by using religion to trick them as Zbigniew Brzezinski did in this video). Yes, sometimes there is blowback, when you train an asset like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden and then lose control of him, but as long as you still retain control, the results can be fantastic. It works like a charm.

Take a look at Afghanistan in the 1980s. The US, expanding the Empire on behalf of the NWO, was working on containment of Russia. They recruited Afghanis and turned them against the then Soviet Union by using religion as a weapon – where the narrative was holy righteous Islam against the godless communist USSR. These fighters became the Mujahideen – a proxy US army – and the whole Afghani-Russia war served as a template for how the US could use radical Islamic terrorists to achieve its geopolitical goals. The deployment of Islamic terrorism continued on into the 1990s, 2000s and beyond, as Chris Kanthan explains:

“When the Afghan war was about to be won, it dawned on us that the Mujahideen project was a brilliant playbook that could be replicated in other parts of the world. That’s when Al Qaeda was formed … Without the knowledge of the American public, the Mujahideen were very active all throughout the 1990’s in Bosnia, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Dagestan, Chechnya etc. These fighters were used for three major purposes:

throw out pro-Russia dictators

install pro-West leaders who would help us build oil/gas pipelines and agree to host US military bases, and

disrupt Russian pipelines and other interests

Azerbaijan was an easy one and we got our man in 1993. Georgia took a long time, but George Soros and his color revolution finally installed our guy in 2005. Within a year, we had a 1000-mile pipeline that linked Azerbaijan (Caspian Sea), Georgia and Turkey! Chechnya was a partial success. They were struggling for independence from Russia and thus gladly welcomed the Mujahideen who also had plenty of Saudi money and US weapons. Within a short time, the non-violent and mystical Sufism of Chechnya was taken over by Saudi Wahhabism.”

The US through its agencies like the CIA has continued to use radical Islamic terrorists to do its dirty work throughout the world, especially in places like Libya and Syria. Al-Qaeda (Al-CIA-da) has been great, but ISIS (I-CIA-SIS) even better. We know that the CIA spent $2.2 billion on getting arms to radical Islamic terrorists in Syria (the so-called moderate rebels) – though this is just the tip of the iceberg.

US/Western funding is not the whole story. The other main force behind all the radical Islamic terrorists is Zionist Israel. In 1982, the Oded Yinon plan was released. It is a strategic plan for Israel with the explicit goal of capturing more territory to form Greater Israel – land all the way from the Nile (in Egypt) to the Euphrates (in Syria/Iraq). It therefore necessarily advocates the theft of land from various nations to achieve this goal, including Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

For the Israeli thinkers behind the Yinon plan, the only way that Israel can become a regional power is by gaining more land and by fracturing the nations around it, so that these nations will be weakened and offer less resistance to Zionist ambitions. Israel wants to balkanize the Middle East, just as the US did to Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to fracture Arab states by splitting them along sectarian and ethnic lines. This gameplan is being played out as you read this with the movement by the Kurds to hold a referendum to create their own nation of Kurdistan – thus taking land and population from Syria and Iraq (and potentially Turkey and Iran too, since they also have Kurdish people). Look how enthusiastically Israel has spoken out in favor of it!

The Oded Yinon plan for Greater Israel.

Make no mistake about it: Israel loves radical Islamic terrorists just as much as the West. The connections between Israel and ISIS, Nusra, FSA, Syrian rebels and other radical Islamic terrorists continue to mount by the day. Israel has a long history of framing Arab and Muslim patsies for Mossad-orchestrated crimes, the grandest of which to date is the 9/11 false flag op. The Mossad routinely uses fake passports and other tricks to implicate Arabs in their false flag terror operations. There are many examples, but a revealing one is Operation Trojan in 1986. Israel deliberately created false evidence of Arab terrorism in order to trick the US into going to war against an innocent nation (Libya). Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky admitted the plot in his book The Other Side of Deception, an excerpt of which is here:

“A Trojan was a special communication device that could be planted by naval commandos deep inside enemy territory. The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit in the Mossad, called LAP, and intended to be received by American and British listening stations. Originating from an IDF navy ship out at sea, the prerecorded digital transmissions could be picked up only by the Trojan. The device would then rebroadcast the transmission on another frequency, one used for official business in the enemy country, at which point the transmission would finally be picked up by American ears in Britain. The listeners would have no doubt they had intercepted a genuine communication, hence the name Trojan, reminiscent of the mythical Trojan horse.

…

By the end of March, the Americans were already intercepting messages broadcast by the Trojan, which was only activated during heavy communication traffic hours. Using the Trojan, the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world (or, as they were called by the Libyans, Peoples’ Bureaus). As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that the Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What’s more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it.”

The Trojan transmitter planed in Tripoli Libya fooled the West into thinking that Libya was responsible for the killing of 2 Americans in the bombing of the La Belle discothèque in Germany. It was later proven that Libya had nothing to do with the bombing. Israel induced the American bombing of Libya by using radical Islamic terrorists as the pretext. More Zio-Islamic terrorism which killed innocent civilians …

Final Thoughts

Don’t expect the West to counter radical Islamic terrorists anytime soon. They are too much of great weapon in the destabilization toolbox of the CIA and the Mossad. Britain is loving its weapons sales to the House of Saud – pity about all those innocent Yemenis who are getting slaughtered with them. The US, especially under Trump, is joined at the hip with the Saudis and Israelis, so it’s business as usual. The Saudis and the US continue to sign devilish pacts with each other (oil, petrodollars, arms and expendable radical Islamic terrorists for geopolitical goals), becoming more and more bound to each other’s destiny, so the US doesn’t have as much bargaining power over the Saudis as it used to. Now, with the NWO wanting to conquer Eurasia, don’t be surprised if radical Islamic terrorists are used against Iran (ISIS), Russia (Chechnya Wahhabis) and China (Uyghur Salafis) in the years to come.

After all, with their scary beards, weird hats and blood-curdling utterances, radical Islamic terrorists are the best bad guys that money can buy.

*****

Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news siteThe Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com, writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

“To maintain the failed state of permanent war, the U.S. spends close to $1 trillion annually to fund the military and intelligence apparatus. ”

“One of the unspoken consequences of the U.S. permanent war policy is the untold number of casualties – and their families and communities/tribes – who suffer.”

Meanwhile, addictions are rampant, cities are in a state of civil war, its infrastructure is crumbling, veterans are begging on the street, almost half Americans are in poverty or on the verge of it, and the list goes on. Go home Yankees and fix your own country!

The current tiff between two of the world’s most pugnacious petty tyrants, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, could, sadly, end in a military showdown – and, worst case, a nuclear engagement. While a nuclear confrontation seems highly unlikely, the political-military shadow puppet show captures endless headlines. Most troubling, Americans are getting increasingly worried, expecting the worst. A recent Gallup poll finds 38 percent of American adults say the threat of terrorism makes them less willing to attend events where there are thousands of people, up from 27 percent in July 2011.

The Trump administration’s current tussle with North Korea is a long-time in coming. Six decades ago, in July 1953, an armistice was signed that ended formal hostilities, but not the Korean War. On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces invaded the South, leading to a growing conflict between the U.S. and China. In this UN-sanctioned conflict, 54,000 Americans were killed. Six decades later, a permanent peace treaty has yet to be agreed upon and the U.S. is upping the ante by installing its latest THAAD anti-ballistic missile system.

Asia was WW-II’s second front. Japan claimed Korea as its territory in 1876 and formally ruled it between 1910 and 1945. Following Japan’s surrender in September ’45, the peninsula was divided into U.S. and Soviet Union (SU) occupation zones. In 1948, two states were formally established; the American-backed Republic of Korea (South), a right-wing dictatorship (including many collaborators with the Japanese occupation), and the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), a Moscow-puppet dictatorship.

Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, formally ending a quarter-century long civil war. Dragging on from 1927-1949, the U.S. backed the loser, the dictatorial Kuomintang regime. Mao’s declaration changed Asia’s political landscape and, in time, the global order. To maintain its hegemony, the U.S. maintains an occupying force in Japan of 28,500 troops and commands South Korea’s 640,000 military.

Pres. Trump rants about North Korea are the clearest example of the U.S. political-military’s failed policy of permanent war. Since the end of WW-II, the U.S. has promoted numerous military confrontations, covert counterrevolutions, political coups and assassinations of designated “enemies” or “security threats.” To facilitate this aggressive policy, the U.S. maintains about 800 military bases worldwide, including 174 “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan and 83 in South Korea – all former WW-II enemy states.

The permanent war is a direct extension of Pres. Dwight Eisenhower’s legendary 1961 Farewell Address warning of the military-industrial complex. In 1970, Seymour Melman relabeled it “pentagon capitalism” and, most recently, the libertarian economists Thomas Duncan and Christopher Coyne dubbed it the “permanent war economy.” Duncan and Coyne identify “three key interest groups” — unions, industry, military — that drive permanent war. It arose from the dual crises of the Great Depression and World War II” and become an essential – and permanent — feature of corporate capitalism.

Edward Hunt, writing earlier in CounterPunch, identifies key aspects of the post-WW-II state of permanent war. He focuses on the “war on terrorism” and it’s economic and social consequences. He identifies two proponents of permanent war. Richard Haass, the State Dept.’s Director of Policy Planning under Gen. Colin Powell’s tenure, proclaimed, “There can be no exit strategy in the war against terrorism.” And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insisted, “We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely. … In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.”

The Afghan War started shortly following the horrendous terrorist attacks of September 11th and officially lasted from Oct. 7, 2001 to Dec. 28, 2014. As of 2017, there were 9,000 U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan with 4,000 more pledged. However, from 1979 to 1989 the U.S. backed Islamic mujahideen groups in the Soviet–Afghan War. Is the long and on-going U.S. military presence in Afghanistan a first-step in a permanent war in the Middle East?

In follow-up to the Afghan offensive, the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003; the war formally dragged on until December 2011. Military confusion and political duplicity compounded a doomed socio-military effort. Now, a decade-and-a-half later, the U.S. maintains 12 military bases in Iraq and deploys an estimated 6,000 military personnel. Iraq, along with Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, are part of a second front in its global permanent war to contain resistance and preserve geo-political hegemony.

While permanent U.S. wars were established in Korea, in force in Germany and put in place in the Middle East, they took different forms in South East Asia and in Latin/South America. The Vietnam War ended in a U.S. military defeat, a failed over-flexing of post-WW-II arrogance. Framed as a geo-moral battle between good and evil, capitalism and communism, ruling class vs ruling party, the failed Vietnam War signaled a further stagnation (after Korea) of the U.S. military.

In terms of permanent war, the Cold War was America’s great pyric victory. Begun in the shared WW-II victory, the U.S.-SU combatants waged limitedly military engagements until the SU dissolved in 1991. Victory left the U.S. the sole global superpower. The Cold War was over; the enemy defeated; the military-industrial complex’s rationale for existence over. Yet, permanent war required ever-lasting, every-global vigilance.

While the Cold War was playing out in Asia and Europe (e.g., Greek 1947 civil war), a nationalist insurgence took root in Latin America and was perceived as a direct threat to the U.S. domination of the Americas. In 1823, Pres. James Monroe proclaimed what become known as the “Monroe Doctrine,” warning European nations that any effort to colonize territory in the Americas would be seen as a direct act of aggression against the U.S. These territories, especially in Central and South America, were off-limit to all but the U.S. for colonization and plunder.

The U.S. permanent war in Latin America occurred against a background of the CIA failed efforts to topple the Cuban Revolution. Fidel Castro marched into Havana on January 7, 1959, a week after U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. The U.S. officially broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961 and, in April ’61, the CIA orchestrated an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs;1,000 CIA foot soldiers, Cuban exiles, were taken prisoner. A year later, in October ’62, the world held its breath over the Cuban Missile Crisis, a showdown between the U.S. and SU. Now, a half-century later, under Pres. Obama those relations are being reestablished; under Pres. Trump, U.S. relations to Cuba are in the air. Trump rumbles about a possible U.S. military intervention into Venezuela.

Between the early-50s and the collapse of the SU in 1991, Latin America was littered with the corpses of victims of U.S. military and CIA clandestine interventions. They included: CIA’s overthrowing of Guatemala’s elected government (1954); the U.S.-backed dictatorships of Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti (1957-1986); U.S. orchestrated military coup in Brazil (1964); U.S. military occupation of Dominican Republic (1965-1966); U.S. orchestrated military coup of socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile (1973); U.S. backed Contra army in Nicaragua to suppress the Sandinistas (1974-1979); and U.S. backed military, including death squads, in El Salvador civil war (1979–1992). And then there were the two great U.S. military victories in the permanent war, in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989-1990).

To maintain the failed state of permanent war, the U.S. spends close to $1 trillion annually to fund the military and intelligence apparatus. The military budget is $825 billion and is divided into four sectors: (i) base spending; (ii) Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) to fight the Islamic State group; (iii) related agencies (e.g., Department of Veterans Affairs, State Dept., Justice Dept., etc.); and OCO funds for the State Department and Homeland Security. In 2016, the National Intelligence Program (e.g., CIA, NSA) budget totaled to $70.7 billion.

One of the unspoken consequences of the U.S. permanent war policy is the untold number of casualties – and their families and communities/tribes – who suffer. Ordinary people, non-combats pay a heavy price to maintain the U.S.’s permanent war. Nevertheless, memory lives on for a very long time while vengeance can endure forever. It’s hard to know how long the misnamed “war on terror” will drag on. Sadly, the failed permanent war will likely persist so long as corporate and financial capitalism determine U.S. government and military policy.

LD: Two diametrically opposite viewpoints are presented here. Both writers agree that the Jews are our main problem, but on most other matters they disagree. The first writer, Lobro, has a great admiration for Donald Trump and hopes that Trump will one day teach the Jews a good lesson. He sees Trump as the “New Stalin” and assumes without question that Stalin was one of the good guys, a heroic figure cruelly misunderstood and much maligned — just like Donald Trump.

The second writer, Arch Stanton, questions these assumptions. He has no time for Donald Trump whatsoever and even less time for Stalin. He regards Stalin as one of the world’s most brutal psychopaths. “Stalin,” he tells us elsewhere, “was clearly a megalomaniac. A bloodthirsty murderer.”

Both writers present their respective cases very well, with considerable verve and panache, and therefore both require a respectful hearing — even though both of them cannot be right. [LD]

PROJECT LUCIFER

LOBRO : Let me talk about something a bit off-side, yet important in that it helps to fix the mind on the big picture, allowing us to fill in the in-depth details later.

Note that Russia’s military budget is about $60 billion, roughly 10 percent of the US military budget, yet in terms of overall field effectiveness there is no comparison. For every dollar the Russians spend on armaments, they are getting ten dollars worth.

So what is going on? This: Russia’s military ambitions are limited and highly focused. The Russians are not interested in global dominance. They are primarily interested in defending Russia and its territorial integrity. That makes their task easier, because their aims are more modest. Their first job is to make sure they can defend their own land so as to ensure that they cannot be easily threatened by hostile outsiders. This they have achieved.

They have achieved the ability to strike quickly and intelligently, to set up a strictly defined operation, and to get out after completing it successfully. In Syria, for example, having taken the requisite action, they leave behind a skeleton crew to monitor the outcome of their meticulously planned strategy, ensuring that everything goes according to plan.

What about the US?

Here we encounter an entirely different situation.

The US sees itself as an “Empire”, Pax Americana, treading in the noble footsteps of Pax Britannica and Pax Romana, two empires that once bestraddled much of the known world and are now dust and ashes. In reality, there is no such thing as an American empire. There is simply a rabbinical golem designed for one reason only: to bring about the Jew’s kingdom on earth.

That’s what the American Empire is all about; it’s a tool to bring about Jewish world domination. America has never been anything but that: a giant slave plantation where the slaves think they run the world, when in reality they must beg for every washroom break without realizing it.

Americans are happy to think of themselves as being Jew-lite but this is wishful thinking. I don’t need to belabor this point, many top Jews having bragged about it publicly — in the Knesset, in Hollywood, in academic treatises, in the mass media. The very title of Yuri Slezkine’s famous book, The Jewish Century, tells its own tale.

So, in order to conquer and run the world, the American military needs to project massive, intimidating power to every corner of the globe simultaneously. They need to meddle in the affairs of far flung countries, crushing the various people they invade with all the most evil mass murdering weapons ever imagined. From Dresden onwards, they do this in order to bring about Deuteronomy to the shocked and awed goyim and grind them into unthinking obedience.

All this takes big bucks. Mass murder doesn’t come cheap. So the ordinary American, not noted for his superlative brilliance, puts his nose to the grindstone and lends his support to Project Lucifer. He makes himself an unwitting agent of his Jewish Overlord. With the sweat and blood of their brothers, their sons, their doggedly toiling neighbors, these simple-minded Americans put their shoulders to the wheel and play their parts in the great drama of global genocide. They kill their own goy brethren to appease the bloodlust of their Jewish masters.

Meanwhile, the Jew must keep the wretched charade up: the state of mental debility and incomprehension, which is why Americans cannot remember where Mexico is relative to Canada. This is why Americans, and to a large extent NATO countries too, must be taught to hate Muslims and other Third Worlders, it being necessary to whip them up into a killing frenzy over places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya, so they don’t feel too bad when their noble armed forces rain down death and destructions on wedding parties, hospitals and schools in backward countries where blood comes cheap.

I never tire of pointing out that at the turn of the 20th century, there were 7 million Jews in Russia and a negligible number of Jews in North America. And yet a hundred years later, you see the exact reverse. It’s now over six million Jews in America, roughly 40 per cent of total world Jewry, and barely 200,000 Jews left in Russia. This huge relocation bears thinking about. What is going on?

This is how I see it.

Khazars, Huns, Mongols, the steppe robbers and marauders of Central Asia would at one time ride along to suddenly overwhelm some unsuspecting community in Russia: killing, raping, pillaging and making off with the loot, and then on to the next settlement in search of further victims. They kept a spare herd of horses, so that when one of the horses tired, they swapped it for another. In this way they kept moving, without a break.

These frightening Asiatic hordes, what became of them? They didn’t die out. They evolved, their underwent a subtle metamorphosis, they changed their camouflage and their clothing. And here they are now — in America! They swapped Russia for America, moving over en masse from the 1880s onward in a series of migrations allegedly caused by pogroms and persecutions in their Asiatic backyard.

Having destroyed Russia, they found a new home in America. The rest is history. And a new history begins now.

— § —

Next comes something that puzzles me to no end.

The time now approached when they were all set to grab the whole world by the throat. They had at their disposal the brain dead rambo underlings of their new country, armed to the teeth, to do their bidding and fight their wars for them. They succeeded spectacularly in overthrowing the Soviet Union. If all had gone according to plan, the Jewish oligarch agents for Rothschild would have turned Russia into a satrapy of the United States. Russia would have been Zog 2 to America’s Zog 1. If they had succeeded, it would truly have been game, set and match to them.

But no, it was not to be! Fate decreed otherwise.

As the coronation moment approached, the Jews stumbled and collapsed, like a chain of valets crashing down the castle staircase.

— § —

Something went badly wrong at the last moment, almost like some sort of miraculous Fatima intervention. It seemed too unlikely to be accidental.

The moment of big triumph could have occurred after the Bolshevik Revolution, but Stalin threw a monkey wrench into that scheme. So the next big push had to be put off until later. In 1990 that time of triumph seemed to have come, with the demise of the Soviet Union. But again something happened that helped to snatch victory away from the world destroyers: the rise of Vladimir Putin.

Under Putin, Russia awoke from its coma. New life was breathed into the corpse, much to the rage of those who had sought Russia’s ruin.

And now, we have Donald Trump, when the world destroyers are desperate to throw the kitchen sink at Russia and get the job done. And Trump isn’t doing it for them. Which makes them angry. I understand their pain – and I am enjoying it quite a bit.

There is still quite a bit of work left to do before we can dismantle Project Lucifer. If the world destroyers succeed in getting rid of Trump – this is where the bouncing ball is at right now – things will heat up mighty fast.

What does the future hold?

We’ll have to wait and see, as the Devil plays chess with God.

“As the Devil plays chess with God . . . “

ARCH STANTON : Here are a few facts as I see them.

(1) Trump is the Jew’s front man for WWIII. I wrote this six months before the election and events are now bearing out this prediction.

(2) Jews intentionally put Trump into office, making it look like “the people” elected him by pitting him against the lowest form of political scum that ever slimed its way into Washington DC.

(3) Despite all their moaning and kvetching, Jews did nothing about Trump other than whine and kvetch to a point where they worked up the “left’s” violent insanity. This violence is now going viral. Considering the fact Jews had a sitting president, JFK, murdered in 1963, it is impossible to believe all they could do about Trump prior to the 2016 election is whine and kvetch.

(4) Through auspices of organization like the ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center, Jews have called off the police in stopping the violence of the “left,” allowing matters to become more violently insane by the day. Given the “hands off” attitude by the legal authorities, members of the radical “left” are now pushing matters to their limits.

(5) Jews have are putting more pressure on the so-called “alt-right” by having police step on their legal, constitutional right to protest while maintaining a “hands off” policy towards the left’s obvious violent criminal actions. This is creating increasing pressure on the so-called “alt-right,” the very people that elected Trump.

(6) Knowing this is the case, the left is ramping up their violence, egged on by media Jews who remain in the shadows as usual.

(7) Trump has now denounced many of his own supporters using the Jew media’s “hot button” terms, leaving them more disorganized by his lack of support.

(8) True white opposition is rapidly being pushed to the point where only the following choices remain:

(a) Fully submit to the Jew’s agenda.

(b) Fight the Jews and their violent sycophants to the death or,

(c) Die violently at the hands of a murderous “left” while trying to peacefully protest the hypocritical outrage to their opposition. None of these options bother Jews in the least.

Should a civil war ensue, it will allow Jews to obliterate what remains of any real opposition to their agenda. Draconian legal measures will be called on to quell the uprising, providing Jews the needed reason for confiscating private firearms. This is the standard Jewish, no-win checkmate i.e. fight to the death or lay down and die. Either way, any opposition to the Jew’s agenda will most assuredly result in death. A Jewish wet-nightmare come true, it’z! Jews carried out this same form of terror with great success in their former Soviet Union, so why would they not do it again in a collectivized America?

Present events mirror the manner in which Jews orchestrated the “sixties revolution,” a “revolution” that brought America “civil rights,” “gun control” legislation, unrestricted immigration and “feminism” while tearing the country apart with its “left-wing” anti-war platform. Now the situation has been turned upside down. It will now be a new “coalition” of “left” and “right” pushing for war, with Iran in the lead for total destruction.

The old “left” and “right” will morph into a new collective, a “coalition of the willing” led by so-called “conservatives” who have openly rejected the alleged “radical” ideas of the “extreme right.” These “conservative” “right-wingers,” are comprised of the same violent psychopaths the media labeled “neo-conservatives” of a few years ago. However, because they were primarily Jews, these “neo-cons” never had the “right wing” label applied to them, as Jews did not want the stupid masses to associate this carefully cultivated hot button term with them at that point. These are the same “neo-cons” that led America into a series of recent major wars in the Near East.

Iran will be the culmination of Israel’s plan to take over the Near East. North Korea is simply a minor diversion so people will not pay attention to what Jews are doing in the Near East. However, the bluster over North Korea is effectively priming the idiot goyim masses for the idea of unrestricted warfare. The people being oppressed in these present confrontations are the people who will undoubtedly protest and fight the Jew’s insane plan to start WWIII. This is the attempt to remove the white “right” so there will be no opposition, only unified support for the coming war will remain.

This is likely the Jew’s final push to destroy what remains of white American resistance. There will be no resistance from the masses of low IQ minorities. Coming events may well lead to civil war. Of course, given their control of the media, Jews control the minds of the gullible, ignorant masses. Therefore, they feel they will be able to favorably manipulate any situation that arises. Given the historical record, Jews have every reason to believe this.

One thing is certain, Judaized American culture has been dumbed down to a point where the gullible goyim cannot think their way out of a paper bag. In turn, Jews capitalize on the mass confusion they created. Thus, the stupid goyim are ripe for the Jew’s next Purim/Holocaust festival slaughter.

Americans still believe that THEY won WW2. They did not. Russia was instrumental in Germany’s defeat.

And we won’t even talk about the whining others who claim they were the primary victims.

“In terms of casualties, around 419,000 Americans and 451,000 British people were killed in World War II. And though this is a sacrifice that deserves to be honored, when compared to the 26 million Soviets and Russians who perished it pales by comparison.”

The historic importance of the Soviet Union’s role in crushing fascism in the Second World War cannot be overstated. It is why the annual Victory Day commemoration, marked by Russians and friends of Russia all over the world on May 9, is so significant.

The epic sacrifice of the Russian-Soviet people in defeating Hitler’s Nazi war machine, a military force more powerful and seemingly invincible than any the world had seen hitherto, is still breathtaking over seven decades on.

As US historian Peter Kuznick writes: “Up to [D-Day, June 1944], the Soviet Union had almost singlehandedly battled the German military. Until the invasion of Normandy, the Red Army was regularly engaging more than two hundred enemy divisions while the Americans and British together rarely confronted more than ten. Germany lost over 6 million men on the eastern front and approximately 1 million on the western front and in the Mediterranean.”

In terms of casualties, around 419,000 Americans and 451,000 British people were killed in World War II. And though this is a sacrifice that deserves to be honored, when compared to the 26 million Soviets and Russians who perished it pales by comparison. That said, both Britain and the United States deserve huge credit for the tons of vital supplies, weapons, and materiel they contributed to the Soviet war effort, evidence that cooperation between the capitalist West and communist East was possible when faced with a genocidal enemy bent on slaughter and destruction.

Hitler’s war aims and Allied appeasement

In truth, Hitler never wanted a war with Britain or the United States. The fascist dictator was a staunch admirer of the British Empire; he was awed at the ability of this small maritime nation to control India, despite the subcontinent dwarfing it in size and population.

“I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather see India under English rule than under any other,” Hitler wrote in ‘Mein Kampf’ (My Struggle), his infamous political manifesto. It should not be forgotten either that Hitler’s admiration for Britain was widely reciprocated in London, where pro-Nazi sentiment was endemic among the country’s elite, up to and including the royal family.

The British Empire was a model for Germany’s future expansion and colonization of Eastern Europe and Russia. Under Hitler’s perverse racial worldview, the Slav peoples, like the Jews, were ‘untermenschen’ (subhuman) whose land he coveted as ‘lebensraum’ (living space) for the German and Aryan race. Combined with his hatred of Bolshevism, his primary military and ideological objective was the destruction of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism.’

“The sacred mission of the German people [is] to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements…and raise them to the dominant position…All who are not of a good race are chaff.”

The invasion of the Soviet Union on June 21, 1941 did not take Stalin or the Soviet Union by surprise, as Western historians have erroneously claimed. Nor was the Soviet leadership under any illusions when it came to a future war with Germany. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was entered into by Moscow after attempts to forge a collective security alliance with Britain and France were rebuffed. With this in mind, Stalin had every reason to believe, especially after the Allies gave Czechoslovakia to Germany on a plate with the 1938 Munich Agreement, that London and Paris were eager to see Hitler attack Russia next. As Geoffrey Roberts writes, “Stalin did not believe that the British and French were serious about fighting Hitler; he feared, indeed, that they were manoeuvring to get him to do their fighting for them.”

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact bought Moscow invaluable time in which to arm and prepare for the war with Germany that the Soviets knew was certain. However, Stalin believed it would not take place until the spring of 1942, given that Hitler was now at war with Britain after his invasion of Poland, and given that the Nazi dictator had long railed against repeating Germany’s mistake of becoming embroiled in a war on two fronts, as it had in World War I.

Operation Barbarossa and Stalin’s leadership

The initial success of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, was astounding, involving huge encirclements and the destruction of Red Army divisions and formations deployed close to Russia’s western borders. Hitler and his generals had planned for a short and ferocious war against what they believed was a badly organized and led Red Army, and in those first few weeks it was an analysis that appeared to be accurate. “The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to defeat Soviet Russia in one rapid campaign,” Hitler set out in a military directive. “The mass of the [Red] army stationed in Western Russia is to be destroyed in bold operations involving deep and rapid penetrations by panzer spearheads, and the withdrawal of combat-capable elements into the vast Russian interior is to be prevented.”

Most Western observers did not believe that the Soviet Union would recover from its initial losses. Indeed, it seemed by the end of November 1941 that the fall of Moscow was imminent, as the Germans approached to within view of the Kremlin’s spires.

Here the role of Stalin’s leadership came to the fore. First, he took the decisive gamble to redeploy nine divisions from the Far East and Russia’s contested border with Japan, deciding that the Japanese would no longer attempt to invade, having mounted an attack on the United States and British forces in the Pacific instead. Second, he appointed General Zhukov to organize the defense of Moscow. Third, and most importantly, despite ordering an evacuation of the city by government departments, Stalin chose to remain, thus inspiring the troops and Moscow’s citizens with the determination to repel the enemy come what may.

What followed is legendary. The Soviet counteroffensive at the gates of Moscow began on December 5, 1941, with Stalin reviewing Red Army troops as they marched through Red Square on their way to the battle as part of that year’s annual commemoration of the Russian Revolution on November 7.

Remarkable endurance and achievement

The Battle of Moscow was the first of many epic battles that now belong to legend. It was followed by the Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942–February 2, 1943); the Siege of Leningrad (September 8, 1941–January 27, 1944); the Battle of Kursk (July 5, 1942–August 23, 1943): Operation Bagration (June 22–August 19, 1944); and the Battle of Berlin (April 16–May 2, 1945).

One man who understood the Red Army’s role in crushing the fascist juggernaut was Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill. In a speech to the House of Commons in August 1944, he observed: “It is the Russian armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the Germany army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being … that would have been able to maul and break the Germany army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet armies.”

No people have endured what the Russian people endured between 1941 and 1945. And no other people have achieved what they achieved in liberating Europe from the tyranny of fascism.

John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

NATO was primarily founded by the US with then-12 members in 1949 as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. NATO’s mission terminated following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Warsaw pact in 1991. At that time, there was no giant beyond Soviet Union to take up position, though the US scrambled to keep NATO running, otherwise the disbandment of NATO could mean a recipe for the US’s shrinking of supremacy over the world.

The other advantage by maintaining NATO is that it is a combined force that allows US to hold an overall grip on the European region. NATO involves 25 European member states among others while the European Union and the NATO have 22 members in common. In this row, France, Britain and the US are nuclear powers.

According to NATO treaty’s article 5,

if a member of the organization faces direct incursion from outside powers, the rest of members shall spring into its defense.

The most spectacular example and the only tragedy ever seen that represents this article was 9/11 attacks. The NATO powers were, indeed, on their own to go for helping the US, yet the enormity of world trade center’s havoc earned their sympathy to join US forces in the invasion of Afghanistan.

NATO’s latest mission began in 2003 in Afghanistan where it deployed thousands of troops through International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). By the term NATO, the finger is pointed at those few member states that really run things and hold a massive stake on the ground. The US and UK are the only two spearheads when it comes to the Afghan war. The rests below these two in the list are just operating under NATO with far fewer troops or some may even contribute to appease the US.

The US deployed NATO forces in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Indian Ocean, of which Uzbekistan demanded several million dollars as payment for exploitation of its soil against Afghanistan.

The second to US at the helm of NATO is the UK. This leading NATO member played more like an influential conduit for the passage of NATO’s proposals and plans into the European Union. But this trend seems to start faltering after the revolutionary Brexit referendum in the UK last year. Although the NATO and UK officials have ruled out a likely split of UK from the NATO following Brexit, it is presumed that the deadlock would start to loom in the longer term – if not in near one.

NATO binds its members to dedicate at least 2 percent of their GDP for defense spending, while only five members including the US, the UK, Greece, Poland and Estonia are less or well above the target. Amazingly, the powerful economies such as Germany and France are falling short in this area.

As aftereffect of the Brexit referendum, the UK could lose the most senior military position of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander which it held for more than 60 years. The deputy leadership among other key roles could possibly slip to France.

The other turning point triggered by Brexit is the EU’s intention to speed up the creation of independent military headquarters outside NATO. This idea, however, was frequently downplayed and turned down by the UK which it saw as a threat to the role of NATO. The UK had said last year it would veto such a proposal, because it may possibly undercut UK’s vigorous engagement in NATO.

Given the pre-emptive use of force, NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg last year in a meeting in Brussels urged allies to keep anti-Russian sanctions alive. He said:

“The international community must keep pressuring Russia to respect its obligations”.

If it sees all this allegations to be hurled at Russia over Ukraine’s standoff, then NATO too has to end a protracted and costly war in Afghanistan, which Russia terms as “offensive”.

It was until Russia’s annexation of Crimea when NATO and Russia led easy marriage and would strike several cooperation deals. In the wake of Crimea’s annexation – whose reason was inferred as Russia’s fear over NATO’s plan to build military headquarters there – the organization froze relationship with Russia.

As a major determinant of NATO, Germany press for exercising of sanctions against Russia at a time this country is Russia’s largest trade partner, followed by France and Italy. By all this, we discover that the NATO and the EU go on the same trajectory after the latter approved anti-Russian bans and embargoes over Ukraine’s crisis which was sparked by NATO in the first place. While others believe the EU is NATO in the guise of a Union.

Given the EU’s drastic need for Russia’s energy resources as well as the broad Russian markets for European products, the EU, more or less, is eager to cut the intensity of sanctions and edge it towards the end. Moreover, the German businessmen and economists have vocalized opposition to further and tougher sanctions on Russia.

On the heyday of NATO deployments and engagements in Afghanistan, some wrecked sectors of this victimized country were shared out among a number of members for the purpose of revival. The US assumed the training and strengthening of the Afghan Army, Japan was handed over the “Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration” (DDR) project, Germany undertook training of the Afghan police, the UK picked war on narcotics and stationed only in southern Helmand province despite having second highest number of troops following the US, and Italy took on the responsibility of the justice sector reform.

Fewer would fit into their tasks, as Japan had no servicemen or armed forces at the time to forcefully disarm the militias. And the UK’s failure to tackle narcotics is largely on display in the eyes of world as Afghanistan still ranks the first for feeding world habits of addiction, let alone the booming drug business worldwide. Lastly, Italy was a poor choice for the justice sector’s reform thanks to being a big law-breaker and Mafia country in the Europe.

On the Syrian side, the latest chemical attack bears out the fact on the collusion and conspiracies of critical NATO members behind peppering of blames on Assad’s regime. First the US used every effort at disposal to direct the blame on Syrian government. Later the UK’s – also first in toeing the US’s line – foreign minister Boris Johnson meaninglessly called off an official trip to Russia allegedly over this country’s involvement in Syria and the gas attack. In third place, France inconsiderately released a report blaming Syrian government for chemical gas attack without a shred of evidence.

All these concurred attacks come as the international neutral investigators as well as Russian team sought to inspect the chemical attack for findings, but they said the US blocked them from participating in a formal investigation.

If it was not for NATO or concerted conspiracies, the UK’s Boris Johnson or French report had nothing to do with a far-regional chemical weapon attack, even if it was perpetrated by very Assad’s government.

The NATO’s pro-war European members are the cornerstone of the US’s decision-making process on waging a war or invading a country. North Korea, for example, might be on the brink of bursting into a war with US. Apart from South Korea’s opposition to the US-DPRK’s likely armed strife, the US might still strongly hesitate to instigate another endless conflict without consent of leading NATO members, importantly because it is unwilling to bear the brunt of costs and arms alone, and that’s why compelling of the NATO members to raise defense spending matters.

Back in 2003, France and Germany stood critical to the US war plans against Iraq. The Wall Street Journal at that time accused Germany of actively promoting American defeat. It concluded by declaring

“What President Bush calls ‘a coalition of the willing’ will become America’s new security alliance”, even though the two states continued to take several diplomatic initiatives to avert a military strike against Iraq which were not well covered in media.

The same year, French president Jacques Chirac and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin presented a joint declaration by France, Germany and Russia calling for extended weapons inspections in Iraq. It said:

“There is still an alternative to war. The use of violence can only be the last resort”.

It was a riposte to President Bush’s remarks just a week earlier that said,

“The game is over”.

After NATO representatives from Germany, France and Belgium vetoed military preparations for the protection of Turkey in case of war in Iraq, President Bush publicly accused Berlin, Paris and Brussels of “damaging NATO”.

Most NATO allies were distaste to the US’s invasion of Iraq, because the ploy to draw them into this [Iraq] war was not as elaborate as that of Afghanistan [9/11 attacks] and unconvincing for the European members. More than a decade later now, we notice a U-turn or a fair degree of rotation in some European and NATO members’ posture towards globalization of war and warmongering. It can be concluded that if major aides of the US – the UK, France and Germany – withhold military and non-military support to this superpower, the peace may descend into the earth over the long haul.